Thunder Rock is the place where a jaded idealist played by Michael Redgrave has assigned himself in the true keepers of the lighthouse tradition. A curious place also he's put himself, miles away from the war he saw coming, on an island in the middle of Lake Michigan in the USA.
There's a plaque on the wall of lighthouse which commemorates the sinking of a packet steamer Land of Lakes during a storm on the lake with all hands lost in 1849. To pass away the lonely hours at the lighthouse, Redgrave has recreated several of the deceased passengers as characters whom he converses with. Only the ship's captain Finlay Currie knows he's dead, the others just think they're stranded on his island waiting for a storm to clear.
Redgrave's come to a personal crisis of sorts, the supervisors want him to take some overdue leave. The leave policy is there so people don't start making imaginary friends like because that's usually a ticket to the rubber room. And there's the real crisis of the oncoming World War which Redgrave tried to tell an uncaring public and its leaders about and now he's withdrawn into being the ultimate isolationist.
On the night that the action of this play takes place, Redgrave's imaginary friends start giving some unexpected answers to questions and not something that his own mind creations would give out with. The ghosts if indeed that's what they were learn their fate and Redgrave learns his responsibility. And it's not on Thunder Rock.
The play was put on by the Group Theater on Broadway in 1939 when the war was just beginning and it ran only 23 performances. The film added quite a bit to get it out of the living room of the lighthouse where all the action takes place on stage. Redgrave who made sensitive and principled characters a specialty in his career gives one of his best performances in Thunder Rock. James Mason is also in this film playing a real friend of Redgrave's who starts wondering about his sanity when Redgrave tells him about his imaginary group of dead friends off the Land of Lakes. The characters are deeply etched to make up for a rather static lack of plot.
A British film set in Lake Michigan, who'd have believed it and also believed it was good.
There's a plaque on the wall of lighthouse which commemorates the sinking of a packet steamer Land of Lakes during a storm on the lake with all hands lost in 1849. To pass away the lonely hours at the lighthouse, Redgrave has recreated several of the deceased passengers as characters whom he converses with. Only the ship's captain Finlay Currie knows he's dead, the others just think they're stranded on his island waiting for a storm to clear.
Redgrave's come to a personal crisis of sorts, the supervisors want him to take some overdue leave. The leave policy is there so people don't start making imaginary friends like because that's usually a ticket to the rubber room. And there's the real crisis of the oncoming World War which Redgrave tried to tell an uncaring public and its leaders about and now he's withdrawn into being the ultimate isolationist.
On the night that the action of this play takes place, Redgrave's imaginary friends start giving some unexpected answers to questions and not something that his own mind creations would give out with. The ghosts if indeed that's what they were learn their fate and Redgrave learns his responsibility. And it's not on Thunder Rock.
The play was put on by the Group Theater on Broadway in 1939 when the war was just beginning and it ran only 23 performances. The film added quite a bit to get it out of the living room of the lighthouse where all the action takes place on stage. Redgrave who made sensitive and principled characters a specialty in his career gives one of his best performances in Thunder Rock. James Mason is also in this film playing a real friend of Redgrave's who starts wondering about his sanity when Redgrave tells him about his imaginary group of dead friends off the Land of Lakes. The characters are deeply etched to make up for a rather static lack of plot.
A British film set in Lake Michigan, who'd have believed it and also believed it was good.